


Five Times Benji Thought Ethan was Dead and One Time Ethan Thought Benji was Dead

by fictionallemons



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Benthan Week, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, M/M, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Movie: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Movie: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, No Smut, Pining, Pre-Slash, Worried Benji, Worried Ethan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25822396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionallemons/pseuds/fictionallemons
Summary: What it says in the title. Happy Benthan Week 2020!!!!!!! <3
Relationships: Benji Dunn/Ethan Hunt
Comments: 14
Kudos: 81
Collections: Benthan Week 2020





	Five Times Benji Thought Ethan was Dead and One Time Ethan Thought Benji was Dead

**One**

The explosion rocks the ground underneath Benji. He's literally thrown to his knees by the earth moving. He flashes back to the time he was visiting a friend in West Hollywood on his first vacation from the IMF, back when he was just a techie in a lab coat. The earth had shaken then, too, a 4.5 magnitude quake, enough to rattle the dishes in the cupboards and scare the shit out of everybody, not enough to take down a building, or bring a grown man to his knees.

Benji turns his head, and it's like slow motion. The gas lines pop like kernels of popcorn, one after the other, and then the unholy noise as millions of pounds of Kremlin start simply caving in. There's dust and ash and screaming and part of Benji wants to turn around, to go back and…help somehow.

But he's been trained to focus on the mission. He's got bigger fish to fry at the moment. He can help by stopping whoever did this in the first place. He doesn't stop, he just staggers to his feet, proceeds as quickly as he can the rendezvous point.

He sticks to protocol, even though he has no idea what happened back there, or how the IMF has been implicated in it. Protocol is the only thing he can think about right now. If he stops to think about anything else, he'll start wondering about Ethan. Where was Ethan when the blast went off? Did he make it out? Did he do something foolish and try to stop it? Is he one of the undoubtedly countless dead prematurely buried in the remains of the once-iconic building?

_No._ He can't think about it. He doesn't know if Ethan's alive or dead, but he'll stick to the protocol. He'll get to the rendezvous point. They'll figure something out. They have to. He's worked too hard to let his first real mission with the legendary Ethan Hunt end in a crater-size disaster.

Jane's there, as planned, and they wait. Hours pass, with no word from Ethan, no word from headquarters, and nothing but bad news coming from the site of the worst disaster in modern Russian history. Benji can't help scanning the news footage for a black-haired man with a prominent nose, intelligent eyes, and strong hands. Just because he's not there doesn't mean he's trapped in the rubble. Maybe he got away. Maybe…

The hours slip by, and the train starts to move, taking them to god knows where. Jane's expression has gotten tighter with each passing minute, but she, too, sticks to protocol, sticks to the plan. He's about to ask her what they're going to be facing when they get wherever they're going, but then he hears something. A noise outside the trainer, a scraping and yelling. He and Jane move quickly, grabbing weapons and pointing them at the intruders who tumble inside, reeking of river water, the cold air coming in with them.

Benji scans the stranger, but doesn't see a threat. Then his eyes land on Ethan, looking for injuries, received to find him relatively whole. "Ethan? Geeze—I thought you were dead."

But Benji's profoundly glad that Ethan's not.

**Two**

Even though they did everything they could, with the radio comms out, Benji and Jane and Brandt still don't know if they had successfully aborted the nuclear warhead or not. No one knows where they are, and until they find out if their mission was successful or not, none of them is particularly anxious to reach out to any government who might have it out for them.

Cleaning up the mess Wistrom made…and the mess of Wistrom, himself, keeps them busy. Benji's fingers are bleeding and he wraps them carefully before donning gloves he found in a utility closet. Wouldn't do to leave more DNA behind than absolutely necessary. He focuses on the task at hand—clean up is just another protocol drummed into agents' heads during basic training. Yes, they've been ghosted by the IMF, but they're still IMF agents, at least in Benji's eyes. He'll be an IMF agent as long as he still believes in their mission—as long as Ethan Hunt still lives and breathes to carry on fighting another day.

He wipes bloody fingerprints off the servers, pours bleach on the floor. Jane's bleeding has slowed, but the next stop is getting her medical attention. Benji keeps his head down, and doesn't think, doesn't let himself think about what had happened to Ethan. He doesn't know if he's alive or dead, or somewhere in between. But he has to keep going. 

Ethan would have wanted it that way.

**Three**

After the thing with the plane and nerve gas, Brandt calls Benji back to the States. He wants to go with Ethan to London, but there's no good reason for him to. The fact that he feels safer with Ethan in his line of sight, no matter what crazy stunt the man in question is pulling at the time, isn't a good enough reason to beg to be taken along.

He lands at Dulles at seven in the morning, debates heading to his seldom-used apartment, the figures he might as well get a start on the day and heads to headquarters instead. Brandt's there already—does the man ever sleep?—and he waves to a couple of techs in the elevator but doesn't bother trying to converse with them—he's got to get at least two cups of coffee in him before he can verbalize anything more complicated than a grunt.

The break room is oddly empty for the morning. Benji manages to make coffee without burning himself too badly, takes it to the conference room with the best view. That's where Brandt finds him a few minutes later, marginally more awake and idly contemplating if he should bother getting Ethan a birthday present this year—last year they'd spent Ethan's birthday staking out an illegal gambling den in Jakarta.

"Benji—I'm glad you're here."

"That makes one of us." He winces. It's not Brandt's fault that he's jet lagged and missing Ethan. Well, it sort of is, but still.

"I've got some news." Brandt's voice is oddly formal and Benji's spine snaps straight. "It's Ethan—he's missing, presumed dead. And the IMF is being folded into the CIA. So. Happy Tuesday."

Benji barely registers the coffee mug slipping out of his hand and shattering on the floor.

**Four**

All things considered, and probably due to the high of actually making it out of that steel death-trap with the data on the drive, Benji's feeling pretty good as he scrambles to the rendezvous point. When he sees Ethan lying still on the hard stone ledge he pauses, blinks. He can't be seeing what he's seeing. He'd been certain he'd find Ethan already gearing up for their escape from Casablanca, not half-naked and prone. Ilsa's there, but Benji can only see Ethan, forcing his body to move closer.

Ethan's dead, and it's all his fault. If he hadn't goaded him into this crazy scheme, if he hadn't made light of the terribly dangerous situation Ethan was putting himself in, then he'd still be—he'd still be—

Ethan coughs. Benji nearly melts in relief. 

**Five**

Benji knows Ethan survived long enough to pull the ignition key out of the remote detonator, otherwise those damn plutonium cores wouldn't have dropped out like pinballs at the very last possible fucking second before nuclear catastrophe. Not that Benji's bitter.

But they lost radio contact with Ethan and the helicopters GPS systems went eerily blank miles away from the medical camp, so no one knows exactly where Ethan is. Or in what shape he's in.

"The temperature's dropping!" Benji yells at Luther as he bats away Julia's careful, competent hands from exploring the abrasions on his neck. "We have to get air support out there before it gets dark."

"We're on it," Luther says. He's trying to reassuring, but his voice is tight with worry. None of them like being cut off from Ethan like this. It usually means nothing good.

"I swear to god, if he's saved the world and then gone and died from bloody exposure after all that, I'm going to…to…" Benji casts about, trying to find a suitable way to punish the universe for unfairly taking Ethan from him yet again.

"They're looking for him. They're triangulating from his last known point of—" Luther touches his ear. "Hold on."

Benji holds his breath.

"They see something. It's—" Luther pauses again.

"What?" Julia's putting some ointment on his neck but Benji doesn't feel it. "What did they find?"

"Its the chopper. Destroyed at the bottom of a cliff."

"Just one? Where's the other?"

Luther listens to the communication. "It's both, they think. They're going to try to get low enough to look for survivors."

Benji's eyes burn with unshed tears. No. Just no. He can't take this again. "If Ethan's anywhere, he'll probably be at the top of the cliff, not the bottom. You know how he is with heights. Always has to climb the tallest bloody thing around."

Luther smiles faintly, and Julia huffs out a strained laugh, but doesn't say anything.

"Wait—yes." Luther's face transforms. "Yes! They see someone. It's Ethan. He's alive."

Benji takes that in and promptly passes out.

**+1**

Ethan opens his eyes slowly. The room, or tent, really, wobbles before he blinks his eyes and his vision clears. He hears the indistinct murmur of voices, and they resolve into Julia and Luther talking quietly just outside the flap of the medical tent.

He's not in any pain, which is strange, because the last thing he remembers is being strapped into a stretcher to be loaded onto the rescue helicopter, and he'd been in a hell of a lot of pain then, but he supposes a medical camp would have a decent supply of drugs. He can't find it in himself to care. He tries to piece together what happened. They'd stopped the bomb from going off, he remembered that much. But where was his team? Where was Lane?

"I just feel terrible. Poor Benji." That's Julia's voice. She sounds sad.

"Lane deserves to rot in hell." Luther, sounding uncharacteristically upset.

"If we tell Ethan, that's where Lane might end up."

"What do you mean 'if?' We gotta tell him."

"Not yet. Not right away. This could really set Ethan back."

"But it's Benji—"

"I know. That's why we can't tell him right away. We need him to get better."

Benji? Ethan closes his eyes. _Benji_ He's going to be sick. He doesn't care how many drugs they've pumped into his system, he's going to tear out every needle in his arm and find Lane and make him pay—

_Benji_ He didn't deserve for it to end like this. Ethan should never have asked him to come on this mission. It was too dangerous. Lane had always seemed to have it out for Benji particularly. And that's all Ethan's fault. He knows it is. Lane could see how much Ethan needed him. How much Ethan loved—

"You're awake!" Julia sounds surprised. Ethan opens his eyes. They feel wet. Julia's standing over him, her face struggling to stay composed. "Do you want me to up the dose—"

"What happened to Benji?"

Julia looks guilty and shifts her eyes to the door. Luther's standing there, face impassive. He shrugs.

"Benji?"

Ethan's not even trying to stop the tears now. "Please, I need to know."

"I don't think—"

"Please."

Julia takes a deep breath. "I can't tell you."

"Luther." Ethan turns his head. "Please."

"It was Lane. He got his hands on Benji. He strung him up, Ethan. It was bad. If Ilsa hadn't—"

"What?" Ethan must not be hearing right.

"Ilsa. She got him down. She got him breathing again. But he's pretty banged up. Julia's got him sedated in the next tent."

"He's—he's alive?"

"Yeah, oh, honey, Ethan, yes, he's alive." Julia looks soft now, and pushes Ethan's hair off his forehead. "He's going to be so glad to see you when he wakes up."

"Can I see him?" The tears are going again now; Ethan can't seem to control them.

Julia nods. "I'll see if I can move him in here, okay?" She leans over, kisses his forehead. "It's going to be okay," she whispers.

Ethan has to believe her. Because Benji's alive. And as long as Ethan's still breathing, he's going to keep him that way.

***

Benji wakes up, disoriented and aching all over. He turns his head. Ethan's staring at back at him from the next bed over.

"Hey." Ethan's voice is low. Maybe it's night. Maybe they're the only two people left on the planet.

"Hey." His voice sounds scratchy to his ears.

"How you feeling?"

Benji wants to laugh but he doesn't have the energy. "I'd be better if I hadn't thought you were dead—again!"

"I thought for a minute that you were—" Ethan swallows hard and doesn't finish the sentence. "It was—I don't ever want to feel like that again."

"Like what?"

"Like there's nothing left to live for, if you're gone."

Benji closes his eyes, opens them again. Ethan's still there. They're still in hospital beds in the middle of a medical camp in Kashmir. He's not off his rocker on morphine.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says finally.

"Good." Ethan sighs, grins crookedly. "Me either."

Benji smiles.


End file.
